THE MASTERPLAN (Creation)

SOME MIGHT PAY

Noel looks down the back of the couch and unearths the Oasis B-sides collection. But is it worth the wedge?

Fifteen months on from "Be Here Now", Creation unleash a collection of B-sides originally tailored for the non-single buying American market. The 14 tracks were chosen by the band, with a little help from Oasis fans worldwide, who voted for their favourites via the internet.

Here's a question. Why is everyone suddenly so bored with Oasis? Cast your mind back, if you can bear ir, to the tail end of '93. Trance techno, Evan Dando, not long now till "Dog Man Star"...if some higher power had laid down an ultimatum - that we would be delivered one of the ten greatest rock bands ever, just so long as we heard them out till the turn of the century - it's hard to imagine that anyone would have carped too much.

As it is, Oasis have been with us barely five years, and already people don't seem to give a flying one anymore. Of course, this sentiment isn't entirely unforgivable. There's been so much 'Meg's Multi-Million Mink Marathon', and 'Drunken Liam Chucks Out Patsy And Crying Jamie Still In His Jim-Jams', that its been easy to forget exactly why those tabloid people got on their case in the first place.

Whatever the initial reasons for its collation, and bearing in mind that Noel himself has sworn there'll be no new Oasis album till the next millennium, "The Masterplan" serves the timely purpose of re-routing popular discourse, away from the latest pool-side high jinks at Supernova Heights and back to, well, Oasis for a change.

It's fitting, too, that this retrospective should coincide with a period of creative stock-taking chez Noel. Given his instrumental 'new beats' appearance on the "X-Files" soundtrack and the amount of time he's apparently spent eating quality canapes with Goldie, the implicit threat is that the next Oasis album could - and should - go somewhere uncharted.

What this album does very well is to show what a varied beast the Oasis catalogue already is. From the neo-punk rock of "Headshrinker" and that charlie-charged live take of "I Am The Walrus" at Sony's 1994 conference at Gleneagles, through previously unnoticed medium-paced gems like "Underneath The Sky" and "Going Nowhere" to the gentle wonders of "Talk Tonight", "Half The World Away" and, of course, "The Masterplan" itself, the album almost acts as the defence attorney's summation that, taking all this evidence into account, Oasis aren't just about boorish pub rock bollocks.

Oasis' non-LP agenda has long been admired by UK fans. Outside of the meat-and-potatoes requirements of the global album market, they've plied B-side tracks with an undeniable air of ambition. So, just as there were always one or two arch bastards who said that "Hatful Of Hollow" was their favourite Smiths album, "The Masterplan" wil have its advocates, leading to many an argument about the odd weak track on "Definitely Maybe", the lyrical deficiencies of "WTSMG?" and the indigestible pomp of the "Be Here Now" album.

Not to get into those arguments just now ("Magic Pie", for Christ's sake...), but something like "The Masterplan" or "Talk Tonight" was precisely what "Be Here Now" lacked. As its title eloquently advertised, it was pretty much heads-down, no-nonsense, mindless boogie all the way. Even on the ballads there was barely a hint of the bleary existential worry that hung over "Morning Glory" and the best Oasis B-sides from that period.

In fact, where all their previous records radiated a sense of Noel's current reality (dreaming of stardom in Burnage, finally attaining it and waking up the next afternoon alone in a hotel room in Auckland, etc), "Be Here Now" seemed too proud to let onto any inner turmoil. This band's feathers weren't to be ruffled, it seemed to say.

It's worth noting that Noel often chooses to sing his most soul-baring songs himself. Also, and almost certainly as a consequence of his singing them, these songs tend to end up racked up behind "Whatever" or "Wonderwall" on EPs. So it's there that you find Oasis' non-rockpig persona, the feminine flipside to the supersonic turbolad, the McCartney to balance out the Lennon, the philosophically troubled wreck after the previous night's would-be Henry VIII.

Not for nothing does the cover of "The Masterplan" show a child-prodigy Noel teaching difficult stuff to a classroom full of baffled old folk. Oddly, though, it seems almost that, to avoid it looking like a 'Noely G sings the B-sides of Oasis' package, various other Noel sung tracks have been left off - why else include the beginner's punk of "Fade Away" over "D'yer Wanna Be A Spaceman", which evokes the loss of childhood dreams with a more fitting melancholy.

"Sad Song", too, could've been rescued from its vinyl-only inclusion on "Definitely Maybe". And what of "Step Out"? One can be consoled, perhaps, that given the current state of the industry and the fact that there are at least 20 other other non-album traks knocking around (including "Round Are Way", "Cum On Feel The Noize", "Whatever", even the mighty "Bonehead's Bank Holiday"), Son Of Masterplan surely can't be too far away.

What the album at hand finally reminds you, however, is how the tension between Noel and Liam, the very fact of their brotherhood (rather than God forbid, either one of them alone), is what makes this group happen. The relationship between songwriter and lead singer has rarely beeen so volatile and intriguing.

Take "Acquiesce". Liam: "I dont know what it is that makes me feel alive/I don't know how to wake the things that sleep inside/I only want to the light that shines behind your eyes." Noel: "Because we need each other/We believe in one another.... That's the older brother expressing the younger's directionless youth and need for fraternal guidance, and then big bro coming in with his reassuring chorus. Embrace are simply not capable of things like this.

"Stay Young", too, conjures images of the child-prodigy Noel at the front of the class: 'Now, Gallagher Jr, come to the front of the class and say after me, "Hey! Stay young and invincible/Cos we know just what we are/And come what may we're unstoppable...". Liam responds with a fantastically energised vocal, and we get one of the best rock'n'roll songs of all time.

It's not all good vibes, of course. Just before its release, Liam furiously told Select that "Talk Tonight" was just Noel getting on a navel-contemplating rock-star trip. "'E better cut it out," he warned. And Liam got his way. Somewhere around Knebworth and the abortive US tour right afterwards, it appears that Noel's songs took on an emotional denial, and the essence of what made Oasis so special was noticeably dimmed.

We all probably have our vague ideas what we'd want from the next proper Oasis album, but what it really shouldn't do is include so-soslabs of big beat named after Aztec monuments in Mexico, but Chapter Four could do much worse than take some its lead from Chapter Three And A Half.

In fact, some of Noel's 'off-cuts' may have to land up on the LP by necessity. Noel's little playground, the beloved Oasis four-tracker, has been fenced off a bit, since the BPI brought in a three-track maximum on chart-eligible singles. Who said the music industry's dying, eh? It's full of constructive ideas...

**** [four stars out of five]

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c 1998 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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